Government requests for social media user data up 770 percent in past decade

From the article: The federal government’s requests for social media user data has dramatically spiked over the past decade, a new report found, revealing major technology platforms reported a 770 percent increase in requests in the past 10 years. The report, published Wednesday by the privacy company Proton, found Google, Apple, and Meta shared data from more than 3.5 million user accounts with U.S. authorities between late 2014 and early 2025. This included a 557 percent increase of disclosed accounts at Google, 668 percent at Meta and 927 percent at Apple. Adding into disclosures under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the number increases to 6.9 million, Proton said. Elena Costantinescu, an author at Proton, warned Wednesday that this surge is “reshaping parenting” as children are embedded into digital systems that retain data potentially for years/ “What begins as a school account, a first email address, or a messaging app can become a long-term record of their behavior, relationships and identity,” Costantinescu wrote. “And that data can remain accessible of years. Costantinescu noted this data, which is often collected for targeted ads, artificial intelligence training and profile building, can later be used for state surveillance. She argued technology companies have designed their systems to to collect and retain personal data in “forms they can still access.” “If a company holds the keys, it can read your data,” she said. “If it can read your data, it can be compelled to hand it over.”

This truly is the golden age of America… because we can’t go one minute without this administration pissing on us.

In all honesty, social media is a relatively recent phenomenon. My parents (59 and 62) did not have any accounts until the last 7 years. I am Central European

Kash, if you want to keep tabs on how much shit I talk about your dumb ass just subscribe to my feed.

MAGA trash thinks it was all by Biden personally calling up Google and Facebook on his hot pink wokephone directly to all the tech CEOs.

Why bother? If the government asked me what I think of them I would happily tell them they are corrupt scum, Also I am in fact against fascism and well aware of my civil rights and of what our Constitution says. I also think FISA is unconstitutional trash and that DHS should be disbanded and it's duties given back to other agencies.

The good news is 90% of that data is just people talking about how Trump raped kids. The other 10% is weird old white guys wishing they were those kids.

OMG - they have no right to know anything!

In the same timespan Facebook has tripled in users, Twitter / X has doubled, WhatsApp more than quadrupled their users, TikTok didn't even exist until 2016, etc etc. So while there's certainly privacy concerns part of is simply proportionate to users gravitating towards the services.